1. We start from what people are actually asking
We do not pick products because a brand got in touch. We pick them because people are looking for them and the existing answers are thin. That keeps the site useful and it keeps the choice of subject out of the hands of anybody with a marketing budget.
2. We buy the product ourselves
We buy at the normal retail price, with our own money, through the same checkout anybody else would use. We do not accept free review units, loaner units, or samples sent in by a brand or its agency. If a brand offers one, the answer is no — not because a free unit is automatically corrupting, but because the moment you accept one you have to spend the rest of the review explaining why it was not.
Buying retail has a second benefit that is easy to miss: we go through the ordering, the packaging, the delivery and, when it comes to it, the returns process exactly as a customer does. A lot of what is wrong with a product is not in the product.
3. We use it the way you would
We are not a laboratory and we do not pretend to be. We use the thing for its actual purpose, in ordinary conditions, long enough to get past the first impression — which is usually the part a product is designed to win. First impressions are the easiest thing in the world to engineer and the least useful thing to report.
4. We compare it with the obvious alternatives
A product on its own is almost impossible to judge. Good or bad only means anything next to what else your money could buy, so every report names the alternatives a reasonable person would be weighing up and says plainly where this one wins and where it loses. If the honest answer is that a cheaper option does the same job, we say that, even when it costs us.
5. We write down the bad parts too
Every report carries a short summary with the good and the bad together, in the same block, at the top. A review with no drawbacks is not a review — it is an advert that has been proofread. If we could not find anything to criticise, we say that too, and we say what we looked for.
6. We score it, and the score is ours alone
Where a report carries a score, it is set after the writing is finished, not before, and it is set by somebody other than the writer. Nobody outside this desk sees a score before publication and nobody outside this desk can change one afterwards.
7. We come back when things change
Products get revised, prices move, and a brand that was excellent two years ago is not automatically excellent now. Reports carry the date they were last looked at. When something material changes we update the report and we leave a note saying what changed, rather than quietly editing the past.
What we cannot know
This is the honest part, and we would rather say it here than have you find it out the hard way.
- We see one unit, not the production run. Manufacturing varies. Our unit working perfectly is not a promise that yours will.
- Long-term durability takes long-term time. We can tell you how something is built and where it feels weak. We cannot tell you today how it will be in five years.
- Prices and specifications move. Anything we quote was true when we wrote it. Check the current figure on the brand's own page before you buy.
- Your use is not our use. The thing that makes a product right for us may be irrelevant to you, which is why every report tries to say who it is for rather than just whether it is good.
If we get something wrong
Tell us. We correct errors of fact, we date the correction, and we do not hide that the earlier version existed. Write to [email protected] and please include a link to the report — the correction route is set out on the contact page.